GamesIndustry.biz - Chris Avellone

Gamesindustry.biz has an interesting interview with Chris Avellone. I sometimes wonder if the poor man has time to finish his work.

Is it difficult to make sure there's no bleed between projects when you're working across so many?

Chris Avellone: Yeah, I think that's a good question to ask. I think it's because the settings in Wasteland and Eternity and Numenera are all so different…I think that kind of makes it safe. Because ideas that fit really well into the new Torment game, like it's crazy how similar the locations can be, they wouldn't fit quite as well into Eternity. Eternity has more elements that, while not being like D&D, Forgotten Realms definitely has hallmark D&D bits about it. Numenera is much more free flowing, much more story focused, and Eternity is stuff like dungeon exploration, party team, how do you approach a problem, how do you approach an encounter. And then the games just feel a lot different in terms of aesthetics. I think prevents a lot of design bleed between the two.

One of the designers was talking about one of the areas for Torment and it's basically this big living dungeon that communities live in, and also monsters, and depending on what you feed the dungeon it opens up new portals to other dimensions and it moves around. If anyone attempts to ever quantify the dungeon, and say 'I'm going to try and measure how big it is' or what intelligence level it is they're mysteriously destroyed. And I'm like: this is the craziest and most awesome fucking dungeon ever, but that's not something we would do for Eternity. Eternity would be much more like: here's the architecture for a dungeon that was exploring soul mechanics. So I think the two aesthetics between them sort of help.

It's also good from the writer's block standpoint where I can go: this idea will work really well in Torment so I can really roll with that, but when I get writer's block there then I can switch over to Eternity and do something else. It actually works out pretty well.

Yeah after this whole KS thing took off he's been working like a hamster on coffee. That being said, it sounds like Project Eternity is his main responsibility right now, so it shouldn't be too bad.

Anyway, it actually sounds like South Park might still be released. For their sake, I hope they build up some new momentum, as it's been so quiet recently that I doubt many are paying attention right now.